Mr and Mrs White. Please note the blue sky, which is quite the rarity for this blog. Photo taken from up on the Sky Road on the other side of the channel
I've written about these two Connemara lovers before, gazing longingly at each other but I never got a picture of the two of them together.
The near beacon is the White Lady. She sits at the end of the promontory that marks the southern entrance to Clifden Bay, near a lovely, quiet little harbour of Errislannan and a beach full of the most perfectly rounded stones I've ever seen. Incidentally, the name Errislannan (Iorras Fhlannáin) is derived from the same saint, Flannan, who gave his name to the island and lighthouse in Scotland from where three lightkeepers mysteriously disappeared at the start of the twentieth century.
The near beacon is the White Lady. She sits at the end of the promontory that marks the southern entrance to Clifden Bay, near a lovely, quiet little harbour of Errislannan and a beach full of the most perfectly rounded stones I've ever seen. Incidentally, the name Errislannan (Iorras Fhlannáin) is derived from the same saint, Flannan, who gave his name to the island and lighthouse in Scotland from where three lightkeepers mysteriously disappeared at the start of the twentieth century.
The White Lady's exact location is known as Fishing Point, probably because the fishing is supposed to be good there. Incidentally, one monologue from the beginning of the twentieth century calls her the Metal Man, which is only inaccurate on two counts. I haven't found any other instance of this name.
The beacon further out, known as the White Man, marks the Seal Rocks or Carrickrana, a reef that stretches a good half a mile and sits from six to twenty feet above high water. The beacon sits on the southeastern end of the cluster. Although they seem identical, it seems as though the top of the Lady is pointier than the Man.
The beacon further out, known as the White Man, marks the Seal Rocks or Carrickrana, a reef that stretches a good half a mile and sits from six to twenty feet above high water. The beacon sits on the southeastern end of the cluster. Although they seem identical, it seems as though the top of the Lady is pointier than the Man.
The pointy-headed Lady ...
...and the flat-headed Man
In July 1876, the Commissioner of Irish Lights posted a notice for tenders for construction of the two beacons. On the 20th August 1877, a Notice to Mariners was issued, saying that two white stone (not metal) beacons had been erected to better mark the entrance of Clifden Bay. It also states that the Seal Rock beacon was thirty-six feet tall and placed on the southernmost part of the reef at a spot six feet above the high water mark. The NTM was reticent about the dimensions of the beacon at Fishing Point and makes no reference to the sex of either.
Yet they've been gazing at each other for 147 years...
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